Brussels, Belgium
October 6, 2008
The
European Crop Protection Association (ECPA) is calling for
the European Parliament and Commission to request an
independent, comprehensive impact assessment from the European
Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on Parliament's and Council's
proposed pest management restriction criteria. The request was
addressed to EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou in
response to the release of what ECPA describes as a narrowly
focussed and highly flawed report undertaken for the European
Parliament's Environment Committee.
"The recently tabled report is based on a limited selection of
available literature, and appears to have reached conclusions
without considering all the relevant issues," said Friedhelm
Schmider, Director General, of ECPA.
"We are particularly concerned that the report evaluated and
quoted studies that had already been discredited in reviews by
international experts, highlighting serious flaws in the
methodology used."
"In order to make an informed decision on what amounts to the
re-engineering of European agriculture, at the very least
legislators require an independent evaluation of the changes
proposed."
To date, the view of the European Food Safety Authority has
still not been requested in assessing the impact of the new
criteria. This is a clear oversight, given the fact that a key
role of EFSA is to ".provide scientific advice and technical
support for the Community's legislation on issues which have an
impact on food safety." [1].
"Given that Europe's food productivity is built upon a
foundation of effective pest management, banning the tools
without proper scientific consideration is irresponsible," said
Schmider. "EFSA should be asked immediately to provide an
overall impact assessment of the Parliament's and Council's
restriction criteria, in relation to the proposal for a
Regulation concerning the placing of plant protection products
on the market (COM(2006) 388).@
"EFSA's review of the criteria will ensure that all MEPs have an
independent source of information upon which they can make an
informed decision for the forthcoming second reading."
The paper released this week by the European
Parliament looked at the cut-off criteria and the
literature related to some aspects of human health.
The assessment was carried out by consultants
employed by Parliament - and not by the independent
Authority created to provide such support to
parliament, EFSA.
The paper states that "the starting point for
gathering information for this overview has been the
paper prepared for the Ontario College of Family
Physicians (Sanborn et al., 2004)"
No reference is made to critical reviews of the
Ontario paper. For example, in assessing the Ontario
paper, the UK government's Advisory Committee on
Pesticides (ACP) found "serious flaws in the methods
employed in the review.
Most important are:
- its failure to
take account of all or even most of the relevant
epidemiological evidence, and the biases
inherent in the way in which material was picked
out for inclusion;
- inadequate
attention to exposure characteristics and
relevant toxicology when interpreting reported
associations; and
- its
superficial synthesis of evidence, which
inadequately explores the impact of the
strengths and weaknesses of individual studies."
Overall, the ACP
concluded that the report does not raise any new
concerns about pesticide safety that had not already
been addressed, and does not indicate any need for
additional regulatory action in the UK.
These evaluations, which place the Parliament's
report's findings in a questionable light, are
readily available on the net:
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The European Crop Protection
Association (ECPA) represents the crop protection industry
interests at European level. Its members include all major
companies and national associations across Europe. |
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